Examining Occupational Therapy Students’ Responses to Integrative Seminars

The integrative seminar is an innovative teaching-learning approach that focuses on active learning and peer collaboration, characteristics that align with millennial learners’ preferences. The use of integrative seminars has been reported by various health professions with positive outcomes. Course feedback survey data from the first cohort of occupational therapy students who participated in a new four-course integrative seminar series were analyzed. Findings suggest that the format of the courses was engaging for the learners. The students particularly valued the small class; the opportunities for peer collaboration; and the variety of active learning opportunities, including simulations. The students also indicated that the seminars helped them to integrate and apply their learning across the curriculum. In another survey completed near the end of their Level II fieldwork rotations, the students indicated that the seminars contributed to their readiness for fieldwork as well as to the development of their critical thinking, interpersonal skills, and professional identity. The findings from this analysis support the potential value of integrative seminars in occupational therapy education

Exploring How Integrative Seminars Contribute to Students’ Readiness for Level II Fieldwork

The integrative seminar is an evidence-based teaching-learning approach that has recently been used to help prepare occupational therapy students for Level II fieldwork. Integrative seminars provide a dedicated context for students to synthesize their learning across various subjects in a professional curriculum. The seminars also focus on practical application of didactic learning. To explore the students’ self-perceived effectiveness of this innovation in occupational therapy education, post-fieldwork survey feedback was collected from a recent cohort of students who participated in a four-course integrative seminar series. Most students indicated that the integrative seminars contributed to their critical thinking, communication/reporting skills, interpersonal skills, and professional identity. All students reported that the integrative seminar series contributed to their readiness for Level II fieldwork. A qualitative analysis of how students applied skills and insights gained from the integrative seminars during fieldwork yielded three themes: mental readiness, cornerstones of occupational therapy practice, and specific aspects of the occupational therapy process. The findings from this study support integrative seminars’ potential value in preparing students for meeting the common challenges encountered on Level II fieldwork

Examining the Sensory Profiles of At-Risk Youth Participating in a Pre-employment Program

The purpose of this study is to use Dunn’s model of sensory processing to investigate the sensory profiles of youth participating in a community-based occupational therapy pre-employment program. The youth participants had been involved in the juvenile justice system and were placed on probation. The study analyzed data from the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile (AASP) questionnaires (Brown & Dunn, 2002) completed by 79 youth participants. Analysis of the participants’ scores on the AASP showed statistically significant differences from the norm in two quadrants; the delinquent youth scored lower in Sensation Seeking and higher in Sensation Avoiding. The delinquent youth participants demonstrated a high prevalence of atypical sensory processing patterns. Implications for further investigation and practice are discussed

Occupational Therapy Students’ Responses to Online Standardized Patient Simulations

Campus closures during the COVID-19 pandemic led to the innovation of online standardized patient (SP) simulations. Extensive preparation with the faculty, simulation specialists, SPs, and 42 occupational therapy students was required to smoothly adapt an occupational therapy learning module from in-person to online simulations. The concepts of functional task alignment and psychological fidelity from the simulation literature guided the process of designing the online simulations. Post-simulation, student perceptions about learner engagement, psychological fidelity, and accomplishment of the simulation’s learning outcomes were collected using anonymous surveys. All 36 survey respondents found the online SP encounters to be engaging. Most experienced realism in their emotional responses as well as the interpersonal and cognitive skills used during the simulation. Overall, students felt that the online simulations provided an effective way to meet the intended learning outcomes. Additionally, five individual student interviews were completed to further explore the students’ overall experience as a simulation participant, challenges encountered, and how the online simulation experience could be improved. Emerging themes from the interview data were: (a) a stepping stone for learning, (b) realism of the experience, (c) physical fidelity, (d) limitations of being online, and (e) curriculum design and implementation. Findings suggest that online SP simulations are a promising innovation with multiple potential applications in occupational therapy education during a pandemic and beyond

Survival and Growth in Experimental Plots at a Santa Rosa Island Restoration Site, 2016-2018

Survival and Growth in Experimental Plots at a Santa Rosa Island Restoration Site, 2016-2018 Marisol Villarreal1, Stephen Bednar2, Kathryn McEachern3 1Woodland Joint Unified School District, 2Mountains Restoration Trust, 3United States Geological Survey Restoration biology, the practice of healing a damaged landscape to that of a functioning ecosysytem, is as variable a science as they come. Restoration treatments may take into account precipitation, symbiotic relationships, microclimate, degree of plant succession, and soil conditions. The most effective restoration is based on experimental research. Such is the goal for the Cloud Forest Restoration Project on Santa Rosa Island, within Channel Islands National Park off the coast of Southern California. Here, plants receive the majority of their moisture from fog, including perennial Coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis) and Purple-needle grass (Stipa pulchra) in experimental plots. The experimental plots are located on Soledad Ridge, which is particularly damaged due to extreme levels of soil erosion. The effort to establish B. pilularis and S. pulchra include treatments aimed at increasing captured fog through fog-harvesting fences and reducing erosion with wattles. The treatments were assessed by comparing growth of B. pilularis and S. pulchra for two consecutive years. This was done by collecting applicable plant measurements (stem diameter, height, and canopy length and width) in 2017 and 2018 and by both (1) comparing the numbers to initial measurements taken in 2016 and (2) comparing the differences among experimental treatments. The results show that survivorship and growth gains are greatest for B. pilularis in the combination fog and wattle treatment, but less pronounced for S. pulchra. Suggestions for key words, if needed: Restoration, fog, Channel Islands National Park, Santa Rosa Island, plant growth

Water infiltration in Different Soil Types on Santa Rosa Island

Research on the Cloud Forest Restoration Project at Soledad Ridge, Santa Rosa Island in Channel Islands National Park, aims to understand the properties of soil water infiltration, specifically field‚Äêsaturated soil hydraulic conductivity (Kfs). Measuring the soil water infiltration rate allows us to calculate potential water reaching plant root systems, the amount of water remaining on the surface, and potential water runoff. The soil types on Soledad Ridge have different organic matter origins including: Island oak trees (Quercus tomentella), annual grasses (eg. Bromus spp., Avena spp), and coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis). In some areas historic non-native herbivore overgrazing resulted in erosion of upper organic layers, exposing large sections of bedrock. We hypothesized that the hydraulic conductivity will be lower in bedrock sections as compared to the other soil types present on site. We used a modified bottomless bucket method (Mirus 2012) consisting of a small bucket approximately 20 centimeters in diameter with the bottom removed. The bucket was secured to each of the soil types to make a watertight seal: bedrock required caulking; the other soil types required grooving and twisting into the ground. The amount of time required for one liter of water to infiltrate was measured which yielded the hydraulic conductivity (Kfs). We found that bedrock had the lowest infiltration rate of approximately 1 Kfs whereas the other soils had a rate of approximately 100 Kfs. These results support our hypothesis that bedrock hydraulic conductivity is significantly slower than infiltration of the other soil types. These results can be used to design suitable planting and irrigation treatments in future restoration efforts at the cloud forest

Under the Firelight: Stellar Tracers of the Local Dark Matter Velocity Distribution in the Milky Way

The Gaia era opens new possibilities for discovering the remnants of disrupted satellite galaxies in the Solar neighborhood. If the population of local accreted stars is correlated with the dark matter sourced by the same mergers, one can then map the dark matter distribution directly. Using two cosmological zoom-in hydrodynamic simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies from the Latte suite of Fire-2 simulations, we find a strong correlation between the velocity distribution of stars and dark matter at the solar circle that were accreted from luminous satellites. This correspondence holds for dark matter that is either relaxed or in kinematic substructure called debris flow, and is consistent between two simulated hosts with different merger histories. The correspondence is more problematic for streams because of possible spatial offsets between the dark matter and stars. We demonstrate how to reconstruct the dark matter velocity distribution from the observed properties of the accreted stellar population by properly accounting for the ratio of stars to dark matter contributed by individual mergers. After demonstrating this method using the Fire-2 simulations, we apply it to the Milky Way and use it to recover the dark matter velocity distribution associated with the recently discovered stellar debris field in the Solar neighborhood. Based on results from Gaia, we estimate that $42 ^{+26}_{-22}\%$ of the local dark matter that is accreted from luminous mergers is in debris flow.Comment: 18+5 pages, 12+5 figures. Supplementary Data can be found here https://linoush.github.io/DM_Velocity_Distribution

Reconciling observed and simulated stellar halo masses

We use cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of Milky-Way-mass galaxies from the FIRE project to evaluate various strategies for estimating the mass of a galaxy's stellar halo from deep, integrated-light images. We find good agreement with integrated-light observations if we mimic observational methods to measure the mass of the stellar halo by selecting regions of an image via projected radius relative to the disk scale length or by their surface density in stellar mass . However, these observational methods systematically underestimate the accreted stellar component, defined in our (and most) simulations as the mass of stars formed outside of the host galaxy, by up to a factor of ten, since the accreted component is centrally concentrated and therefore substantially obscured by the galactic disk. Furthermore, these observational methods introduce spurious dependencies of the estimated accreted stellar component on the stellar mass and size of galaxies that can obscure the trends in accreted stellar mass predicted by cosmological simulations, since we find that in our simulations the size and shape of the central galaxy is not strongly correlated with the assembly history of the accreted stellar halo. This effect persists whether galaxies are viewed edge-on or face-on. We show that metallicity or color information may provide a way to more cleanly delineate in observations the regions dominated by accreted stars. Absent additional data, we caution that estimates of the mass of the accreted stellar component from single-band images alone should be taken as lower limits.Comment: Version accepted by Ap

Time trends in the use of anti-hypertensive medications: Results from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Background: Previous reports have suggested that new evidence of the comparative effectiveness of different medication classes from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) does not always alter treatment decisions for first-line anti-hypertensive therapy. Objectives: To evaluate the association of RCT evidence in December 2002 from the Anti-hypertensive and Lipid-Lowering treatment to prevent Heart Attack Trial (ALLHAT) on use of anti-hypertensive medications in a multi-ethnic cohort. Methods: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) study, a prospective cohort study of 6814 adults from four ethnic groups, had four separate assessments of drug use. Users of anti-hypertensive medications at baseline were excluded. We evaluated temporal changes in the medication class reported by new users of anti-hypertensive medications. Results: After the exclusion of anti-hypertensive drug users at baseline, 32% of new users of anti-hypertensive drugs seen at exam 2 were prescribed a diuretic. The publication of ALLHATwas associated with a subsequent increase in the proportion of new users taking diuretics at exam 3 compared with exam 2 (relative risk (RR): 1.31; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.09-1.59). After the report from ALLHAT, the proportion of users of diuretics seen at exam 3 rose to 44% (starting in 2004) and 39% in exam 4 (starting in 2005). This increase in the proportion of diuretic use among new users of anti-hypertensive medications declined slightly but could still be detected at exam 4 as compared to exam 2 (RR: 1.28; 95%CI: 1.04-1.57). Conclusions: The randomized trial evidence from the ALLHAT study was temporally associated with a moderate increase in diuretic use. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd